Word: franzes
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...years Raymond Franz devoted his whole being to the Jehovah's Witnesses. The religion responded by raising him to the very top, as a member of its worldwide Governing Body. But it was a difficult period for the leadership. In 1975 the sect faced a debacle: the present world did not vanish as Witness publications had all but guaranteed. In a faith in which doubt is not tolerated, questions inevitably arose in the minds of some believers. Gradually Franz began to question other teachings, and now, in a downfall as dramatic as an excommunication within the College of Cardinals...
Officials of the Watch Tower Society, as the religious organization of 2,257,000 followers is formally known, refused all comment on the unprecedented case. But Franz, 59, reluctantly agreed to break his silence and explain to TIME the accusations against him. In doing so, he provides a rare glimpse inside the secretive headquarters of the tightly organized faith...
...BOILING CAULDRON of tortured artists. Franz Kafka must surely hold a place of honor. Born at a bad time, in a worse place, and raised by a middle-class family that had little use for writers. Kafka spent his life floundering in a morass of guilt and self-hatred. Never quite convinced of his right to exist, he wore himself down with ceaseless self-dissection, suffocated in an office job the talent he knew he had, and often tried to sabotage his most precious relationships. Although he never formally committed suicide-a failure he gloated over with particular relish...
...century Prague for a Jew. "Anti-Semitism," a phrase now used to describe segregated country clubs, meant frenzied riots and accusations of ritual murder. And since the Kafkas were doing their best to assimilate, feeling a meaningful religious identity was (until relatively late in his life) almost impossible for Franz. Second, there was his nationality (German), making him an outsider twice removed while in Prague. And then there was his father. Hayman stresses Kafka's relationship with his father as the principal formative influence upon his character, suggesting that it subliminally provided the subject matter for much of his writing...
Hayman clearly lays out these nightmarish circumstances, and if they somehow seem grotesquely comical, the cumulative effect on Franz was anything but funny. He was crippled for life by an overwhelming conviction of his own vileness, and his biography. Hayman says, is "a series of hesitations in the process of condemning himself and carrying out the execution...